Resources
There are lots of resources and educational materials available that you could give out to your customers to promote healthy eating and sustainable food such as recipe cards, leaflets, posters and newsletters.
Many of these materials can be ordered for free either from your local primary care trust or from national organisations - see the Links section.
Linking with national campaigns
A useful way to promote your work is to tie your activities to national food celebrations, such as Fruity Friday or Apple Day. This can help you to get more publicity.
Many national campaigns also provide free information packs with guidance about what activities you could do and other tools, such as a sample press release. Sustain’s food calendar lists many of these celebrations and events, month by month.
Games
As part of training sessions and educational activities you could also run some interactive games or a quiz. For example you can use pieces of fruit, tins, packets and cartons to ask people to guess five items they think can count towards the recommended consumption of ‘at least 5 portions of fruit and veg per day’. You can then discuss the answers or place them on a big picture of the ‘Eatwell plate’ picture showing healthy eating guidance (previously known as the ‘Balance of Good Health’ plate).
Large floor mats are now available showing the Eatwell plate that can be used for group sessions. It may be possible to borrow materials like these from your local Health Promotion Library if there is one at your primary care trust. Otherwise they can be ordered from companies like the Comic Company: http://www.comiccompany.co.uk/.
Sustain has also developed a new Seasonal Food Calendar floor mat as part of the Good Food Training for London project. If you are interested in finding out more about this please contact Pamela Brunton pamela@sustainweb.org
